drag. There was a heartstopping moment when everything seemed to go silent, and the jumper seemed to hang suspended, held up only by momentum, and then the harsher sound of the rotors cut in. Slowly Nkosi increased their power, until forward motion stopped and the jumper was hovering a hundred meters above the floor of the clearing.
“Anything on the sensors, Sten?” Heikki asked.
Djuro shook his head. “Nothing of interest. Very small, mobile life—”
“Gerriks, probably,” Alexieva said.
“—but nothing any bigger.”
“You can take her down, Jock,” Heikki said.
To her surprise, it was Sebasten-Januarias who answered, “Going down.”
There was no reason Sebasten-Januarias shouldn’t land the craft, Heikki knew—he had almost certainly made this kind of landing a hundred times, and it was for just that reason that she had hired him—but she found herself holding her breath anyway, until at last the jumper came to rest with a gentle thump. Sebasten-Januarias cut the engines, and announced, over the descending whine of the rotors, “Well, here we are.”
After the steady noise of the engines, the silence was almost oppressive. Heikki pushed herself up from her console and stood stretching, trying to shake off the irrational sense of unease. She heard footsteps on the ladder behind her, and then Nkosi slipped past her into the bay. A moment later, Sebasten-Januarias followed, still smiling with the pleasure of having completed a tricky maneuver. Heikki smiled back in spite of herself, and looked at Alexieva.
“What do we need to do here to secure the camp?”
The surveyor shrugged, both shoulders, this time, a freer, more relaxed gesture. “You didn’t pick up any orcs on the way in, and they tend to avoid the clearings anyway. I’d want to put out barrier lights, though, just to discourage creepers.”
Heikki nodded her agreement, and Nkosi said, “I will help you, if you like.”
Alexieva looked momentarily startled, and then as though she were seeing the pilot for the first time. “Thanks,” she said, after an almost imperceptible hesitation. “The lights are at the back.”
Nkosi followed her toward the jumper’s tail, walking blithely through the image in the tank, frozen now in an off-balance picture of the clearing, and they both vanished into the shadows outside the main lights. Heikki leaned back to her console to seal the day’s recordings, and a moment later the tank vanished as Djuro finished closing down the console.
“That’s that,” he said, unnecessarily, and Heikki nodded. “I assume we’re sleeping in the ship?”
“Absolutely,” Heikki said, and saw Sebasten-Januarias grin.
“Pop the hatch, please,” Alexieva called, and came back into the light, moving stiff shouldered under the weight of the barrier light units. Nkosi followed, four more units wedged into his enormous hands. Djuro worked the release, and the belly hatch sagged outward; at his nod, Sebasten-Januarias hurried to push it fully open. The ramp extended automatically, and the two headed down it into the clearing.
The air blowing in through the open hatch was very warm, and smelled sharp and green. Heikki breathed deep, teased by a vague memory, the suspicion that she had smelled that scent before, in some unpleasant context, but the thought faded before she could track it down. She shook herself, and crossed to the hatch, leaning out into the warm evening air.
The sun was down now, and the sky was fading rapidly toward night. The wind hissed through the blackwood needles with a noise like a dozen women whispering together in a distant room. The thin grass had been blown into tangles by their landing, and lay in knotted whorls; beyond the area affected by the rotors down- wash, it lay in sleek waves, shaped by the prevailing winds. There were flowers, too, slender dark orange blossoms that grew four or five together from a cuplike circle of leaves. One lay almost at her feet, snapped by the ramp. Death-trumpets, she thought, and that was the smell, too, that had tugged at her memory. Death-trumpets, the lovely insect-eater, perfect example of form and function: she could still remember a company biologist, a friend of her parents’, extolling the plant’s virtues over dinner. The idea had frightened her, though she had understood that the death-trumpets could not consume a human being; Galler had seen a weakness, and grown pots of them on his windowsill, until overfeeding—there were too many insects in Lowlands— had killed them. She could still remember the mix of pleasure and disgust with which she’d watched their leaves turn yellow, their strong verdant odor giving way to the sicky stench of decaying, half digested strawflies.
She pushed the thought away, angry at its irrelevance, and made herself walk down the ramp and into the clearing. She made a quick circuit of the jumper, forcing herself to concentrate on checking the external systems while the light lasted, then turned back toward the hatch. Nkosi and Alexieva were there before her, the surveyor squatting over a junction box while Nkosi looked over her shoulder.
“Watch your eyes,” Alexieva called, and Heikki looked obediently toward the jumper, one hand raised to shield her sight. Light flared behind her, forming a solid-seeming wall around the jumper. Heikki winced despite her protecting hand. Alexieva grimaced, and hastily adjusted the controls. The worst of the brilliance faded, refocussed outward; now the jumper was ringed with light no more dazzling than a fire, a light that cast multiple shadows across the tangled grass.
“Pretty impressive,” Sebasten-Januarias said. He was standing in the hatch, a portable stove in his hands.
“I think the rations are self-heating,” Alexieva said.
Sebasten-Januarias shrugged and came on down the ramp. At the bottom, he looked around for a moment before finding an almost bare spot of ground, then kicked at the bits of vegetation until he’d cleared a space for the stove. Setting it down, he said, “So? It’s nice to have a fire.”
“That is certainly true,” Nkosi agreed, and moved to help him collect bits of debris for fuel. Alexieva eyed them expressionlessly, Heikki saw with some amusement, then went to join them, catching up a handful of dry grass as she passed. Then Djuro appeared in the hatch, balancing a stack of steaming ration trays. They ate in an oddly companionable silence, sitting cross-legged on the ground or on the edge of the ramp, while Sebasten- Januarias’ fire crackled and spat in the open stove. It was full dark now, but the barrier units provided more than enough light. Looking up, Heikki saw that they drowned all but the brightest stars.
She stooped and picked up her emptied tray, suddenly aware of her own exhaustion. “I think I’ll turn in,” she said, to no one in particular, and saw Djuro nod in answer.
“Me, too.”
“I think I will stay out for a while,” Nkosi said. Alexieva looked up silently, and looked away.
“Seal the hatch and put on the monitors when you come in,” Heikki said, and started up the ramp into the main bay.
Sebasten-Januarias was there before them, already curled into a light-weight sleeping bag on one of the benches, his face turned to the jumper wall. Heikki grinned—it was funny how often the youngest members of her teams were the first to surrender to sleep— and threaded her way past the shut down consoles to the narrow storage rack at the back of the bay. She reached for her bag, twisting it deftly out of the clamps, and glanced along the bay wall. The best of the bunks was toward the nose, partially shielded by Djuro’s console. Boss’s privilege, she thought, and unrolled the bag onto the narrow pad. Djuro turned his back politely as she stripped off her four-panel shift, leaving herself in the loosely concealing undershirt. She tugged off her boots, rolling them up carefully so that nothing would crawl inside overnight—hardly necessary, inside the jumper, but a precaution so habitual that she would not sleep if she omitted it—and slid into the sleeping bag. The thermopack purred softly at her feet, adjusting itself to her body temperature and her sleeping preferences. She fell asleep listening to its gentle hum.
The hiss of the ramp jacks and the blast of sunlight from the newly opened hatch woke her the next morning. She swore, blinking balefully into the brightness, and heard Djuro echo her curse from the bunk behind hers.
“So sorry,” Nkosi said, with patent insincerity. Heikki struggled upright in time to see him vanish into the light. She muttered another malediction, and reached for her shift, wriggling it ungracefully over her head. She ran her hands hastily through her hair, pushing it into a semblance of order, and slid out of the bag.
“Rise and shine,” she said, not without malice, and prodded the nearest still-occupied bunk. Sebasten- Januarias emerged, looking rumpled, scrubbing at his eyes like a schoolboy.
“Breakfast,” Alexieva announced, too cheerfully, and held out a stack of trays. Heikki accepted hers in decent
